Phone: (575) 233-4071
54 Santana Rd. • Vado, NM 88072

Your Personal History Book

When you commission Full Circle Heritage Services to prepare a personal history, several options are available to you. The most elegant and long-lasting of these is the personal history book. However, a personal history project can be as short as one page. Typically, a one-page personal history project could be a single story or an account of an honor accorded your loved one, with a beloved photograph, framed for wall or table display (click here to see a sample page). Another short personal history might be recorded on a single CD and would include a few of your subject's favorite adventures or stories.

(click here to download Adobe Reader if you are unable to open the link above)

The process begins with a consultation, in which you have the opportunity to reveal the nature of the project you are considering. The personal historian will guide you in selecting elements to be included in the project that are right for you.

Full Circle Heritage Services' typical book project will involve recording an oral interview with you or a loved one. The interview may take several hours or even several days to complete. Once the recording is finished, it is transcribed. This means that your spoken words or those of your selected interviewee are transferred to words on paper. This is the raw material from which the personal historian molds your book. Transcripts are usually checked against the recordings to ensure their fidelity with the original. This preserves an individual's words, but it also captures their way of speaking.

The next step is that the personal historian will group material on the same topic together and create working chapter titles. The material will then be edited from question and answer format into a narrative style. The text is then manipulated into book format, a process involving font selection, graphic design, and the preparation and insertion of a limited number of photos of your choosing. When complete, the formatted pages are printed and shipped to a binder for binding.

Binders offer a fairly wide choice of cover styles. Some produce only paperback books, others, only hardbacks. The cover choices usually include one or two different types of fabric-covered hardback book jackets, imitation leather, real leather, slipcases, and so on. Other variables that may affect price include plain versus foil lettering, and your choice of cover art, including die-stamping, degaussing, affixing photos, and the like.

Other options

If you are interested in a less intensive personal history project, consider a greeting card incorporating a favorite photo; a framed story and photo combination, as mentioned above; or a personal history folio project, a two- to three-page article with one or more photos, set in a bi- or tri-fold folio, similar to those used for diplomas. Another option is to break your book project into phases: Phase I—recording only, Phase II—transcription, and Phase III—book production. Those selecting the "recording only" option will receive their unedited audio files on a CD. Such interviews can always be transcribed and turned into books later, when clients are better prepared to carry their personal history projects to the next step.